The early development of children's self-conceptions is believed to be heavily determined within the family. The mother's comments to and about her child are one plausible contributor to the child's self-knowledge and self-regard. To ascertain the nature of this influence, the natural discourse of mothers and their young children was investigated. The verbalizations of depressed mothers are of special interest because of problems of self-concept and self-esteem characteristic of depression. Thirty-five minutes of mother and child speech were sampled from naturalistic interactions. Transcriptions of verbalizations were made from audio-videotaped records. The content of the verbalizations of 17 well and 18 depressed mothers and their 2- to 3-year-old children was examined. Mother's utterances and child utterances were independently coded.